The Grudge (2004)

Any American who's seen an Asian horror movie can attest to the fact that the land of the rising sun churns out some very different horror movies, ones that we Americans aren't really used to seeing. Horror movies here in the States usually deal with some serial killer with a sharp object looking to kill people for their transgressions. Have sex, you're gonna die. Do drugs, you're gonna die. Kick a puppy, you're gonna die. Cheat on your algebra midterm, you're probably still gonna die (sorry). If you do something naughty in any way, shape, or form, you're bound for certain doom. But if you do encounter the villain, you might be able to live.

But in Asian horror movies, everybody's screwed. Everyone from the cute four-year-old kid you saw at Toys 'R' Us to that prick who cut you off in traffic on your way to work, they don't stand an ice cube's chance in Hell of surviving if they encounter an Asian horror movie villain. You don't even have to really do anything to incur the wrath of the villain. Just look at the villain, and thanks for playing, your prize is a toe tag and a one-way ticket to Morgue City. The guilty suffer, the innocent suffer, animals suffer, everybody suffers.

And not only that, but Asian horror movies like to seriously mess with your head. We Americans also like to know the whys and the hows of our horror movies. We like everything explained to us and wrapped up with a cute little bow. Why is the mass murderer mass murdering? Where did that icky flesh-consuming virus come from? However, it seems as if Asian horror movies worry less about telling us why something is happening. They just tell us that it is happening and there's nothing we can do to stop it. Asian horror is all about atmosphere and building up as much dread as possible before giving viewers a payoff intended to make you leap out of your skin.

DreamWorks Pictures saw the upside in bringing such a film to American multiplexes when they bought the remake rights to Hideo Nakata's popular Japanese ghost story Ringu, originally released in 1998. Remade as The Ring in 2002, it grossed $128,579,698 at the American box office and prompted studios to buy the remake rights to as many Asian horror movies as they could. One of these was Takashi Shimizu's Ju-on. Its title a play off the Japanese words for "grudge" and "curse," it was at first a popular direct-to-video movie that Shimizu himself remade for Japanese theatrical audiences in 2003. It was this remake that Sam Raimi proclaimed the scariest movie he'd ever seen. Raimi's Ghost House Pictures quickly purchased the remake rights, brought Shimizu on to direct once again, and headed to Japan to tell the tale of a quaint little house that's pissed off at everybody.

The movie begins with a few lines of text, setting up the movie's universe. When someone dies in the grip of a powerful rage, a curse is born. This curse manifests itself as ghosts that hold a grudge against anyone unlucky or just plain stupid enough to enter the domains they reside in, stalking its victims until they finally perish and pass along their grudge to some other unfortunate person. Exposition aside, let's get to the plot at hand. Our primary story follows Karen Davis (Sarah Michelle Gellar), a foreign exchange student living in Tokyo with her boyfriend Doug (Jason Behr). Karen works as a social worker and hospice nurse in her spare time, and when her coworker Yoko (Yoko Maki) doesn't show up for her shift, she's asked her to be Yoko's temporary substitute.

Karen heads to the house Yoko was assigned to, populated by Matthew Williams (William Mapother), his wife Jennifer (Clea DuVall), and his senile mother Emma (Grace Sabriskie). However, Karen finds the house in complete disarray. The place looks trashed, and the only person there is the near-catatonic Emma. However, there's more in the house than just a mess and a crazy old lady. Karen soon discovers the house is haunted by two malevolent spirits, and as various unusual and increasingly disturbing events occur around her, she and Detective Nakagawa (Ryo Ishibashi) search to find the house's connection to a series of mysterious deaths and the disappearance of Matthew's sister Susan (KaDee Strickland), and how they're all related to a pair of murders and the suicide of an American college professor (Bill Pullman) three years earlier.

The Grudge has gotten a lot of knocks against it for its similarities to The Ring, mainly because they're both horror movies that feature female ghosts with long nasty hair covering their faces. And I'll be the first to admit, some scenes in The Grudge are eerily similar to scenes from The Ring. However, both films are seemingly inspired by Japanese ghost stories about the spirits of wronged women returning from the grave to seek vengeance for their deaths. That said, I loved The Grudge. Loved it. The 2003 version of Ju-on was a frightening enough experience, and this thoroughly faithful remake maintains that same level of fear. I must admit that the American Grudge joins the extremely short list of horror movies that have scared the living crap out of me.

Takashi Shimizu and screenwriter Stephen Susco utilize a Quentin Tarantino trademark in the movie, using a nonlinear style of filmmaking as they jump around the film's timeline to show various points in the story at different times. While it sounds rather confusing and hard to follow, it works to help set the off-kilter atmosphere of the movie. It makes sense if you look at it this way: As Sarah Michelle Gellar's story progresses forward, the story of the house progresses backward. The end of Sarah's story meets the beginning of the house's story in the finale, and it all makes sense in the end.

Also fun are Shimizu's mix of quiet dread and jump scares. Jump scares have become horror clichés over the years, but The Grudge makes very good use of them, and there's not a wasted scare in the movie. And the way Shimizu frames shots (with a little help from the gorgeous work of cinematographer Hideo Yamamoto and production designer Iwao Saito) allow the jump scares to sneak up on us. Even though I thought the ending was a bit of a letdown, every minute of the movie was entertaining.

The effects are superb, from the wisps of smoke that ooze out of a wall to the undead thing that crawls down a flight of stairs (perhaps an homage to a famous deleted scene from The Exorcist?). Also wonderful is the film's score, composed by Christopher Young. If Shimizu's work is frightening visually, then Young's score is frightening audibly. The music is absolutely great. The one thing that bothered me, though, was the insanely high number of Americans in the movie. The movie takes place in Japan, yet there's more Americans in the main cast than there are Japanese people. Is it so hard to find Japanese actors? Maybe they could have called up Tarantino and asked him which casting agency he found Kill Bill's Crazy 88s at.

The crew and most of the cast do a commendable job with what they're given to work with. Sarah Michelle Gellar is watchable, yet she just seems really bland. After seven seasons of having a TV show built around her, it's hard to picture her as a leading lady in a big Hollywood production. And the reputation she developed from Buffy the Vampire Slayer didn't help her here, either. Her character here is a weak and scared young lady in an unfamiliar land, as opposed to the sarcastic bad-ass demon killer that everyone recognizes her as. I just kept waiting for her to whip out some of her slayer moves and dropkick the ghosts into next Tuesday, and it never happened. It looks like she's descended into Mark Hamill/Luke Skywalker territory: no matter what she does from now on, she'll always be under the shadow of Buffy Summers.

On the other hand, Jason Behr was a complete failure as Gellar's on-screen love interest. He doesn't have too many scenes, and when he does, he's just awful. He just stands there and looks all Ashton Kutcher-y and has absolutely no personality whatsoever. Casting Takako Fuji and Yuya Ozeki to reprise their roles as the malicious mother-and-son ghosts from the Ju-on movies was a fun and welcome touch, but perhaps the highlight of the cast was Ryo Ishibashi as the grizzled yet curious Detective Nakagawa. Somebody needs to send Ishibashi to the set of Law & Order or C.S.I. quick, because he did a great job here, and I hope he gets more work in the States.

Despite a paper-thin plot and characters that aren't exactly paragons of complexity, The Grudge is one of those movies that could scare the pants off even the most jaded horror movie viewers. The Grudge literally made me jump out of my seat and scream, and I never do that. The recent trend of remakes has irked a lot of people (including myself), but if they can be as good as The Ring and The Grudge, I say Hollywood should start remaking all the Asian horror movies they can. In spite of its flaws, I'll give The Grudge four stars. Go check it out, won't you?

Final Rating: ****

Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004)

The survival horror genre of video games has given the gaming world some landmark titles since the genre came into prominence in the mid-1990s. But few survival horror games can say they're as influential as Resident Evil. The original game and its sequels have become seminal titles for fans of horror games, and I doubt it came as a big surprise to anyone when a Resident Evil movie was released in 2002.

And although the reactions from fans and critics were decidedly mixed, the movie's box office returns were enough to warrant Sony Pictures sending a sequel into production. Retaining elements of the first movie while adding a heaping helping of elements from the game franchise to soothe upset fanboys, Resident Evil: Apocalypse is at least an improvement over its predecessor.

The movie begins shortly before the end of its predecessor. A team of scientists from the Umbrella Corporation opens up its Hive laboratory below the Midwestern town of Raccoon City following the release of the T-Virus, but like most things in sci-fi/horror movies, things just go straight to Hell and the T-Virus escapes. Umbrella begins evacuating its executives from Raccoon City, leaving the rest of the city to rot. Thirteen hours later, Raccoon City has been contaminated with a widespread outbreak of the T-Virus. The town has become overrun with packs of zombies attacking any citizens they come across, and police actually arresting some zombies.

Around that time, we're reintroduced to Alice (Milla Jovovich), the survivor of the first movie. Like we saw at the end of the previous movie, she awakens in an Umbrella-owned hospital and wanders out into an abandoned street, making sure to snatch a shotgun from a police cruiser. However, she might not need it, as it turns out a round of Umbrella experiments has given her superhuman fighting abilities.

Come nightfall, Raccoon City has descended into chaos. The zombie infestation has reached massive proportions, forcing Umbrella to quarantine the city and quell a mass exodus to prevent their little accident from making national news. A team of Umbrella commandos sent in to clean up the mess has been wiped out, leaving just Carlos Olivera (Oded Fehr) and Nicholai Sekolov (Zach Ward) to fend for themselves. They discover and team up with another band of survivors, comprised of Alice, local pimp L.J. (Mike Epps), news meteorologist Terri Morales (Sandrine Holt), and video game heroine Jill Valentine (Sienna Guillory), a suspended member of the Raccoon Police Department's elite STARS division.

The motley crew is soon contacted via payphone by Dr. Charles Ashford (Jared Harris), a high-ranking Umbrella scientist outside the city gates who's been following their actions via Raccoon City's street cameras. And folks, Ashford has some crappy news for them. It turns out that Umbrella's gonna use their military connections to drop a nuke on Raccoon City at dawn, but Ashford will guarantee them safe passage out of town before then if they can find his daughter Angie (Sophie Vavasseur), who disappeared following a car accident during the evacuation of Umbrella's crew.

Unless they'd really like to stick around and have a missle dropped on them, they don't really have a choice. Thus, they're stuck fighting through a horde of undead humans and packs of zombie dogs to rescue Angie. However, even after finding Angie, they still have to make it to their rendezvous point intact. But it turns out that zombies and dogs aren't the only things they have to worry about; there are also the Lickers that return from the first movie, and the "Nemesis" (Matthew G. Taylor), a bio-engineered leviathan roaming the streets in search of Alice.

Resident Evil: Apocalypse is a big violent action roller coaster ride, and it knows it. It has no qualms with substituting thrills in lieu of things like plot advancement and character development. The movie isn't for moviegoers who like well-written stories and Oscar-caliber acting. It's for those who like watching people shoot at monsters with high-powered weapons.

Director Alexander Witt uses his feature film debut to show off years of tricks learned working as a second unit director on flicks like Pirates of the Carribean: The Curse of the Black Pearl and The Bourne Identity, and other than a few moments, the film is visually astounding. Unfortunately, many of the best action scenes are buried underneath quick cuts and shaky camera moves.

And though I said the movie wasn't about plot, the script by Paul W.S. Anderson (who passed the director's chair to Witt so he could make Alien vs. Predator) could have used some work. The plot proper (an amalgamation of the the second and third Resident Evil games with a dash of the original movie for flavor) didn't begin until almost a third of the way through the movie, and the buildup to the climactic Alice/Nemesis fight scene was actually very anticlimactic when it's all said and done. We did get some fun scenes, though; namely a Licker's siege on a church and the survivors fighting their way out of a zombie-infested graveyard. Something is always happening on screen, however, and it's never boring.

Unfortunately, it seems as if Anderson didn't really care about the side characters, just wanting to cram Alice down our throats. If you're going to disrespect the game's characters by making them sidekicks to some new character that comes across as the female John Rambo, the fans are really going to resent you. That's probably why that the Resident Evil movies aren't all that popular with the fans of the franchise that I personally know.

The movie's acting was also give or take, depending on which actor we're talking about. Sienna Guillory was great as Jill, emulating her video game counterpart right down to the way she walked. Too bad she was second banana to Alice, but what can you do? Meanwhile, Milla Jovovich seemed to be half-assing it at times. It's like she said, "Okay, folks, my boyfriend wrote the movie, so the rest of you goons are gonna work while I sit here and look all awesome. Somebody get me a martini." I also liked Oded Fehr as Carlos, but he was severely underused. Why bother promoting Carlos from the games to the movie if you're barely gonna put him in there?

I really enjoyed Mike Epps as well, even if he was just one-dimensional comic relief. He got a lot of mileage out of it, and provided many funny moments. Another thing I enjoyed was Jeff Danna's industrial-metal score. It's far from memorable, but it worked for what the movie needed. And whoever was working the sound effects needs to be beaten. A lot of the scares are accompanied by a loud sound effect, making it seem like they wanted to scare the audience by making them deaf

While Resident Evil: Apocalypse is certainly a better film than its predecessor, it still struggles to reach higher than mediocrity. It teeters precariously on the line between good and bad, coming across as fun at certain times while banal at others. It's really that inconsistency that brings about the movie's downfall. There are some entertaining moments, especially for fans of the games, but ultimately, the movie is average at best. There's a good movie that could be made out of the Resident Evil games, but this sadly isn't it.

Final Rating: ***

The Passion of the Christ (2004)

Motion pictures have not been without controversy. Some draw fire for their content, others for their messages. With the exception of Michael Moore's anti-establishment documentary Fahrenheit 9/11, I really can only think of one other movie this decade that has sparked as much debate and media discussion as Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ. Funded by Gibson's own wallet and independently distributed by his Icon Productions company and Newmarket Films (since no major distributor wanted to touch it), it became the little religious epic that could, raking in $604,370,943 worldwide and surpassing My Big Fat Greek Wedding as the highest-grossing independent feature film ever. But does it hold up to the hype?

I'm sure most of you readers know the story of Jesus, but since I'm wont to put the plot in my reviews, you'll just have to hear it again. The movie begins in the middle of the night at Gethsemane, an olive grove near Jerusalem. Jesus of Nazareth (Jim Caviezel) has gone to there to pray, accompanied by three of His apostles. As the apostles sleep, Jesus prays for His safety, as the prophecy of His death will be soon be fulfilled. Soon thereafter, a group of Roman soldiers appear, led by Judas (Luca Lionello), another of the apostles. Jesus isn't surprised and is actually pretty calm, and after a brief struggle between the three apostles and the soldiers, Jesus peacefully hands Himself over and is led away in chains.

The soldiers bring Jesus before the Jewish leaders, where high priest Caiaphas (Mattia Sbragia) interrogates Him before Jesus admits that He claimed to be the prophesied messiah. As the priests discuss what they should do with their prisoner, a guilt-ridden Judas appears before them, asking them to let Jesus go in return for the thirty pieces of silver he was paid to identify Him. Caiaphas tells Judas that his guilt is none of their business, so Judas throws the bag of silver at them and leaves. The guilt begins to eat away at Judas's sanity, finally pushing him to suicide as he hangs himself from a tree the following morning.

That same morning, Caiaphas and the priests present Jesus before local Roman governor Pontius Pilate (Hristo Shapov), alleging that Jesus is a blasphemer and an insurrectionist. Pilate questions Jesus in private, and under pressure from his wife (Claudia Gerini) and fearing civil unrest, Pilate tells the priests to take Jesus to the hedonistic King Herod (Luca De Dominicis). Jesus's home of Galilee is in Herod's jurisdiction, so why not send him there? The priests present Jesus to Herod, who assumes He's just crazy. Herod gets a good laugh out of the moment, and sends Jesus back to Pilate. Man, and I thought the justice system was screwed up now. Turns out it was just as screwed up 2000 years ago. Two millennia go by, and the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Anyway, Jesus gets sent back to Pilate, and the priests are sick of getting the run-around. Pilate doesn't believe Jesus is guilty of any wrongdoing, so he lets the crowd decide which prisoner will receive his customary pardon during Jerusalem's Passover festival: Jesus or a notorious criminal named Barabbas (Pietro Sarubbi). The crowd picks Barabbas, and demand that Jesus be crucified. Pilate refuses, stating that he doesn't know what Jesus could have done that was deserving of a punishment that severe. To appease them, Pilate orders that Jesus be tortured by receiving a heavy scourging with a cat-o'-nine-tails before being freed. Even the beating isn't good enough for the crowd, so Pilate washes his hands of Jesus and sentences Him to death before turning Him over to the crowd. We enter the movie's third act as the near-dead Jesus is forced to carry an enormous cross through the streets of Jerusalem, a journey that ends with his execution on the hillside of Golgotha.

Bravo to Mel Gibson for having the balls to put his reputation as a filmmaker on the line by making a movie that reflected his convictions and beliefs. Most movies about Jesus usually just show His life and gloss over His death and resurrection, yet The Passion of the Christ shows the suffering He went through to pay reparations for humanity's iniquities. In a business where people worship at the altar of the Almighty Dollar, it's refreshing to see a movie that says something more than "I love money."

The Passion isn't about the cast or the cinematography or anything resembling a plot. Gibson's intent was to show the final day in the life of Christ (and by extent, Catholicism's fourteen stations of the cross) more realistically, in a way that it had never been shown before. Movies and artwork in the past depicted Jesus hanging on the cross with well-groomed hair and not a speck of dirt or blood on Him, almost looking like He was having a good time. The Passion, however, shows Him looking haggard, in agonizing pain and covered in dirt and gore. Most biblical movies also had everyone speaking English, and here, Gibson pushes the realism one step further by having all of the characters speak in Latin, Aramaic, and Hebrew, without a single word of English dialogue.

As I said, the movie isn't about cinematography or acting, but since I'm here to review a movie, I might as well talk about its technical merits. The Passion is an extremely well made movie, and I applaud cinematographer Caleb Deschanel for his work. Every member of the cast was on their A-game here, and I applaud them as well. Jim Caviezel's performance as Jesus was a very sympathetic one, coming across as a man who was scared but willing to die for what he believed was right. And I was really creeped out by Rosalinda Celentano as Satan, who occasionally appears to make attempts at planting seeds of doubt in Christ's head. She (yes, she) gives Satan the needed creepy factor to make Cavaziel's "scared but sure" performance that much better. Also excellent was John Debney's musical score. During the third act especially, the score is very melancholy yet hopeful, and it is both gripping yet understated.

Sure, some could be sickened and turned off by the brutality of the movie, and come away feeling like they watched nothing more than a biblical snuff film. That's a very valid response to the film. I don't expect everyone that watches The Passion to break out into tears like some people or run to the nearest church as soon as the movie ends (though feel free to do either, if you so desire). In fact, the violence of the movie may not have the same effect on some that it has on others. Personally, after a lifetime of watching violent horror movies, I was rather desensitized to the violence, though there were several moments that made me flinch. But overall, I'll give The Passion of the Christ three stars. I don't see it as the five-star epic that others see it as, but it's still a good movie to watch as a companion piece to movies about the life of Jesus.

Final Rating: ***